The JewishGen offices will be closed beginning Monday afternoon, March 25th, and will re-open on Wednesday morning, April 3rd. For your convenience, we have compiled some Passover related links from various JewishGen pages that might be of interest to you:

And, in case you missed it earlier, don’t forget to read JewishGen’s 2012 Review, which can be accessed by clicking here.No matter where you plan to spend the Holiday, we wish you and your families a Chag Kosher V’Sameach, a Happy and Healthy Passover, and thank you for being part of the JewishGen family.

Sincerely,

Warren Blatt

Managing Director

Avraham Groll

Director of Business Operations

Michael Tobias

VP of Programming

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There are many places
to find information about Irish Jews and in the past I have written about some
of them on the JewishGen Digest and the JewishGen Blog. Today, however, I provide another means of
looking up Irish ancestors. It is
checking them out on Ancestry.com which not only has records from America, but
those from Ireland and other places as well.

This is not a
comprehensive listing, but a snapshot of what you can find if you have a mind
to. I started by looking up my favorite
search name of COHEN and plugged in Dublin in the Ancestry.com search engine on
its front page.

There I found some of
the following:

Records – There are immigration
records, particularly of individuals who crossed over Canadian and Mexican
borders. For instance, Leah and Alfred
Cohen arrived through Niagara Falls, NY, on September 23, 1929, and Anna Cohen
Shiller arrived through Laredo, Texas on July 26, 1941. A number of the Irish immigrants are listed as
leaving from the port of Queenstown, Ireland, and others from various ports in
England such as Liverpool and Southampton.

In addition, there
are naturalization records. One is Jacob Cohen who was born in Dublin in
1899 and who lived in Baltimore, Maryland.

Another group of
records are those from Griffith’s
Valuation, 1848-1864. There, I found
Abraham Cohen, Esq., who had a residence in 1853 in Ranelegh, North, at 13
Ranelegh Road (west side) which was comprised of a house, office and small
garden.

Also, there is the England and Wales Probate Calendar,
1858-1966, which lists Jane Cohen who died October 2, 1877, late of 67
Grafton-street, Dublin.

The great record sets
are the Ireland, Births and Baptisms,
1602-1911, where I found Caroline Cohen, born April 16, 1880, the daughter
of Abraham Cohen and Henrietta Hamburgher; the Ireland, Civil Registration Marriages Index, 1845-1958, where I
found David Isaac Cohen and Annie Leventon who married in 1882; and the
Ireland, Civil Registration Deaths Index, 1864-1958, where I found Hyman Cohen
(1876-1951).

Photographs - Not only did records pop up, but also photos of individuals as
well as tombstones in Dublin’s Dolphin Barn Cemetery. For example, there is a photo of Miriam Leah
Cohen who married David Rosenberg and had twelve children.

Also found is her
tombstone with her dates of 1840-1913.

This gives you some
idea of what is available and there is so much more to wade through. Good luck in your searches!!!

Recently,
a friend told me about a nostalgic replica of the shtetl of Miasteczko,
Poland.The recreation of the shtetl is
called Yankel’s Shtetl Station and it provides an experience of what life in
the shtetl was like.The contact at the
Yankel’s Shtetl Station is Gadi Jakob, jakob.shtetl@gmail.com.

In
addition, a further interesting virtual shtetl portal was developed in 2008 and
is now part of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/cms/the-project/.This Museum is being constructed in in Warsaw, Poland.It is there that you can also learn more
about the 2,913 Polish shtetls represented on the site, especially in the
filmography and media.

By the
way, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “shtetl”, you can go
look it up on Wikipedia!!!It is the
essential building block to find your ancestral records as they are organized
by shtetl and not by family name.

This
month’s volunteer spotlight focuses on KehilaLinks contributor Marshall Katz, a
retired GS-13 of the U.S. Government, a retired USAF Reserve Chief Master
Sergeant (E-9), and recipient of both the U.S. Civilian and the USAF
Meritorious Service medals. He is married to Helen E. Fields of Pittsburgh, and has a
daughter, Lena.

His
involvement in JewishGen started when he decided to research his family history
in Sub-Carpathia. Through JewishGen, he was able to make a connection with a
man in Michigan
whose family was from the same shtetl in Ukraine---Klyucharki
(Várkulcsa)---and, coincidentally, also from the same hometown in Pennsylvania. This man
has a relative who still lives in Klyucharki and with whom Marshall visits.

Since
his retirement, Marshall, who is self-taught creating web sites, has
applied his talents to creating KehilaLinks pages for
the villages and towns in which our ancestors once lived. Working 12-15 hours a
day, he has created 120 KehilaLinks web sites, focusing on Sub-Carpathia, Ukraine,
Hungary,
USA,
Slovakia
and Romania.

He also
spearheaded the effort to establish JewishGen’s newest Special Interest Group –
Sub-Carpathia SIG
– in 2011, by creating a web site "portal" for the JewishGen
Sub-Carpathia SIG which routinely receives visitors from around the world,
currently from 84 countries and all 50 U.S. states.

As an active member of the Sub-Carpathia
expat community, Marshall
attends picnics and events both in the USA and in Israel, helping
to promote JewishGen and the JewishGen Sub-Carpathia SIG.

Marshall makes himself available to help people in their Jewish
genealogy research. This past spring, he was able to help a Holocaust survivor
determine the birth-date of her recently deceased husband. A different time, he
received an email from a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, who, for various
reasons, never saw her grandparents' tombstones in Berehove (Beregszász). Marshall was able to
locate the grave, and send a photo to the survivor.

It is not surprising that Marshall routinely
receives emails from researchers who had success as a direct result of Marshall’s efforts.

He has
visited the Sub-Carpathia, Ukraine
region frequently and has been instrumental in collecting information about its
numerous villages and towns, in order to create KehilaLink web sites to benefit
all researchers with an ancestral connection to Sub-Carpathia. He documents his
trips and, once back home, sends out a trip report to subscribers to the
Sub-Carpathia SIG (and other) mail lists. Links to his most recent trip reports
(2011 & 2012) can be found here.SEE "Travel Planning," then "Trip
Reports."

Marshall is also a board member
of "The Shalom Foundation," is active in the Zembo Shrine Antique Car
unit, and has spearheaded The Packard Automobile Club (PAC) web site presence
on the Internet. His 1940 Packard Limousine took "Best of Show" in
1997.Marshall commented, "In
retirement, despite the amount of time and work involved, I derive great
pleasure in creating Kehilalinks for researchers today and for future
generations to come."

Susana
Leistner Bloch, JewishGen VP for KehilaLinks said it best: "It is a
pleasure to work with Marshall
and I wish there were more people like him dedicated to memorializing and
commemorating Jewish Communities."

We are pleased to welcome the following webpages to
JewishGen KehilaLinks We thank the owners and webmasters of these webpages for
creating fitting memorials to these Kehilot (Jewish Communities) and for providing
a valuable resource for future generations of their descendants.

Monthly Meeting of the JGS of Cleveland will take place on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 7:30
PM.

In Miller Board Room at Menorah Park

This meeting's Speaker will be Kenneth Bravo.

He will present Finding Frida

Ken
Bravo is the immediate past president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Clevelandwho has been researching his family roots since the mid 1970's.
His presentation will beabout using the Yad Vashem database, the Internet and lots of
good luck to find hismother's first cousin, Frida, who survived the Holocaust.

NOTES:
1. a. Yad Vashem is Sunday, April 7, 2013. In the
morning at B'nai Jeshurun Congregation, 27501 Fairmount Blvd,
Pepper Pike, 44124, Rabbi Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland will be
discussing the Jews of Poland
today- Fact or Fiction. There is a continental breakfast at 9 a.m.
followed by the lecture at 9:30 a.m.
b. In the afternoon, at Park Synagogue
(main), 3300 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights, 44118, Rabbi Schudrich,
will be the guest speaker at the community-wide Yom HaShoah Program at
2:00 p.m.

2. On Thursday, April 11, 2013 at Suburban Temple-Kol Ami at 7 p.m.,
there will be a presentation by Dartmouth
College Hillel Rabbi Edward S Boraz on "Project Preservation", a
service project involving the restoration of
cemeteries of the once vibrant Eastern European Jewish community. the
program is free and open to the
public but reservations are required. Contact Mark Heller at mheller@fodorco.com to make the
reservation.

3. In April, the film "No Place on Earth" is coming to the
theaters. This was originally a production on the
History Channel. It is the story of thirty-eight Ukrainian Jews who
survived World War II by living in caves
for 18 months, the longest recorded sustained underground survival.

4. The 9th Annual Lineage Groups luncheon and Induction will be Sunday,
May 19, 2013 at the Independence
Civic Center at 12:30 p.m. with lunch beginning at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Sean
Martin, associate curator of Jewish
History and Eastern European Geography at Western Reserve Historical Society
will be speaking about the
Geography of Eastern Europe. Cost of the luncheon is $20.00.
Families who have been in Cuyahoga County
a minimum of 100 years or more and have submitted the necessary documentation
will be honored at this event.
The Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland is a participating organization in
the Lineage Groups.
Flyers will be available at the next meeting.